Reviews

Formerly known as Life Force Juice, Jubali is a line of organic and cold-pressed juices and smoothies. Featuring a number of playfully named and rather unique formulations, Jubali has done a nice job with its juice blends. As for the packaging, we think there's some room for improvement.

Soylent’s ready to drink “version 1.3” (released at the end of 2014) is a powdered nutritional shake mix that is the commercialized version of the do-it-yourself recipe (which can be found on the Internet), and designed to satisfy all nutritional requirements that the human body needs.

Velu is a beverage that’s focused on a classic ingredient for juice bars: wheatgrass. It’s one of those under-loved ingredients that is generally consumed -- many times in shot form -- purely for health purposes rather than flavor. That’s what Velu is setting out to change with its flagship product.

Mansi is a straightforward blend of water, calamansi juice, sugar, honey and ascorbic acid. If you haven’t had calamansi before, it’s basically a citrus fruit that has a flavor profile that’s very close to lemon. That being said, the flavor of this product is basically that of a slightly exotic lemonade. So really, anyone could pick up a carton of Mansi and enjoy it. It is, however, quite sweet.

Ripe Craft Juice is a new line of cold-pressed, high pressure processed juices launched by FreshBev, which is best known for its Ripe Craft Bar Juice cocktail mixers. FreshBev has partnered with Ocean Spray to source fruit for the line, which debuted with two cranberry varieties and a red grapefruit juice.

Mocked Up is the first nationally marketed and distributed RTD non alcoholic cocktail (aka “mocktail”) brand. The products, each of which contain real juice and are packaged in a multi-serve Tetra Pak carton, are designed to give the consumer an authentic cocktail experience but without the booze.

Califia Farms, which had previously produced only ready-to-drink coffees, has officially jumped into the cold brew coffee concentrate category with this product. The key selling point of this multi-serve beverage is, much like other cold brew products, its low acidity level, which Califia touts as being 60 percent lower than hot brewed coffee.

Packaged in 1.7 oz. plastic containers, KOR is a line of organic, high pressure processed (HPP) juice shots that come in two varieties: Ginger and Turmeric. While the small format makes it intuitive that the product is a shot, it's both a challenge and a potential opportunity for the brand in that it’s not fighting for the same shelf space that’s currently taken up by HPP juices.

A couple weeks ago, Daily Greens unveiled a brand extension called Half Pint, which is a three-SKU line of 8 oz. cold-pressed juice blends designed for kids. It's an interesting move for the green juice-focused brand, and, from our perspective, well-executed in terms of package and formulation.

Functional drink brand Buck O'Hairen's Legendary Sunshine has a design that is definitely eye-catching and unique in terms of its illustrated approach, however, when you actually examine the packaging, it’s pretty hard to figure out what exactly the product is -- or even what it’s called.

At last week’s Expo West show in Anaheim, Suja debuted three new flavors in their “Classic” lineup. These flavors, which push the Suja lineup to over 40 SKUs, are focused on their low-calorie formulations and have a lower price ($5.99 - $7.99) than most of their Classic linemates.

With its new Tonic Water, Zevia has gone in a slightly different direction, which should, at least in some outlets, help the brand gain placement in the mixer section. But a big question remains: how does tonic water pair with Zevia's primary sweetener, stevia?